The Wire Magazine 1992-11

CHARLIE PARKER
PUBLIC ENEMY
’ARDKORE TEKNO
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN

STATES

ALTERED

J5 E l51)X|$E DREAM

BILLY JENKINS

still guitar crazy

REGGIE WORKMAN
bass-ic instinct

BOB MARLEY

interviewed, reviewed

THE SHAMEN

r fi r

NOW’S

THE TIME presents

THE NEWS SECTION

NOW’S
THE TIME

5SWIRE

NOW’S
THE TIME

Jn TONIGHT

ABERDEEN Music Hall: Roy
Hargrove Qnt (4); John
Scofield Qt(15)

BATH University (0225 826
111): Meredith Monk Vocal

BELFAST Queen’s

University (0232 322 925):
Martin Taylor (13); Julian
Joseph (14); Red Rodney (16);
John Scofield Qt (17); Stan
Tracey Octet (18); Norma
Winstone with John Taylor
Trio (25); Django Bates and
Human Chain (28)
BIRMINGHAM Adrian Bolt
Hall (021 236 3889):
Meredith Monk Vocal
Ensemble (1 ),BCMG-
Stockhausen’s Momente (22);
The Twin Cities Octet (28);
The Cannonball (021 112
1403): New Noakes Qt (7)
MAC( 021440 4221):

Svengali (11); Ian Palmer Qnt
(8); Danny Thompson's
Whatever (27); Small Acts
(30-2 Dec)

BRIGHTON The Event

(0213 132 621): Brighton Jazz
Bop (27) Gardner Centre
(0213 685 861): Small Acts

(18)

CAMBRIDGE The Junction
(do 0223 62550): The
Shakedown Club with Steve
Noble, Billy Jenkins and
Roberto Bellatalla (1); Tina
May/Don Weller Qnt (8);
Andy Sheppard/Nana
V asconcelos/Steve Lodder (15);
Elton Dean/Howard Riley Qt
(22); Antonio Forcione
Acoustic Band (29) The
Portland Arms (do 0440 101
689): Hession/Wilkinson/Fell
(7)

CARDIFF Sherman Theatre

t (5); A John Cage Concert
k Eastley (26)

Rooms (031 220 4349): Small
Acts (7) Usher Hall: Dave
Brubeck Qt (14) Queen’s Hall
(031 6682019): Roy Hargrove
Qnt (6); John Scofield (13);
Chick LyallQt (23); Tron
Tavern (do 081 892 2520):

GLASGOW City Hall (041
2215511): Nigel Clark Qnt
(2); Roy Hargrove Qnt (5);
John Scofield Qt (14); Chick
Lyall Qt (21)

LEEDS The Adelphi (do

Wilkinson/Fell (8) Civic
Theatre (0532 455 505):
Small Acts (25) Irish Centre
(0532142 286): GilScott-
Heron (5); Shakedown Club
with Steve Noble, Billy
Jenkins & Roberto Bellatalla

LEICESTER Phoenix Arts

Centre (0533 554 854): Paul
Rutherford (Oct 28); Meredith
Monk Vocal Ensemble (3);

Christmann (4); The Alaric Qt

(19); John Stevens/Kent

LIVERPOOL Bluecoats Arts
Centre (051 109 5291):
Microgroove (15)
MANCHESTER RNCM ( 061

213 4504): Meredith Monk
Vocal Ensemble (4) Band On
The Wall (061 832 6625):
John Etheridge Qt (5); PJ.
Bells (do 081 892 2520): John

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE

The Corner House (091 265
9602): Jonathan Gee Qt (8);
Louisiana Red (8) Live

Small Acts (3D St Nicholas’
Church (do Victoria Centre
0602 419 411): John Surman
(4); Carol Grimes & Ian Shaw
(18); Gary Crosby’s NU Troup
(Dec 2)

READING Rising Sun
Institute (0134 866 188):
Trevor Wishart & Mayhem 2
(18) University (0134 860
222): Gil Scott-Heron (7)
SALISBURY Arts Centre
(0122 321 144): Gil Scott-
Heron (2)

SOUTHAMPTON

University (0103 593 741)
Jean Toussaint Qt (17)
SOUTHEND Jazz Club:
Shakedown Club with Steve

Roberto Bellatella (9)

ST. ALBANS Red Note

Group (15)

CABOT HALL, E14 (Oil 512
3000): Courtney Pine/Django
Bates’ Human Chain (Oct 29);
Joe Henderson Trio (Oct 30);
Back To Back featuring Ralph

31); At

ah Ibrahim/Carol
Laka Daisical (1)

THE CAMDEN CENTRE,

WC1 (Oil 388 1394):

THE CRYPT, WC1: LMC (5)
JAZZ CAFE, NW1 (Oil 284
4358: Roy Hargrove (3); K-

(27); Eddie Russ (28)

JAZZ RUMOURS, N16 (081
254 6198): Hession/
Wilkinson/Fell (6); Elton Dean
Septet (14); John Law Trio

(20); Elton Dean Qt (7, 27);
John Stevens Qt (21); John
Stevens’ Spontaneous Music
Ensemble (28)

ORIGINAL JAZZ CAFE, N16

(011 359 4936): Let Freedom

Ed Jones (7); Kent Carter/
Derek Bailey/John Stevens
(12); Steve Williamson (13/
14); Iain Ballamy(22); Claire
Martin/Jon Gee (27)
POWERHOUSE, Nl: The Ex

THE SOUTH BANK
COMPLEX (07/ 928 8800):
Meredith Monk Vocal

Hampton (3); Tokyo Int.
Music Ens (12); John Scofield
(16); Spyrogyra, Diane Schuur,
Tom Scott (30)

THESE RECORDS, SW8

(011 622 8834): Dayglow

VORTEX (07 1 254 6516):
John Etheridge Qt (24)

WATERMANS ART
CENTRE (081 5681116):

WATER RATS GRAY’S INN
ROAD, Nl (do 081 503
6681): Shakedown Club with
Steve Noble, Billy Jenkins and
Roberto Bellatalla (2); John
Law Qt (3); Louis Moholo Trio
(10); Elton Dean Trio (17);
Alex Maguire Sextet (24)

(0222 396 844): Gil Scott-

COLCHESTER Arts Centre
(0206 511301): John Scofield

Noakes Qt (1); Vince Mendoza
& the Northern Creative Jazz

NOTTINGHAM Playhouse

<5 sWIRE

AN EDITOR’S IDEA

What happens to music when the money runs out? Too
late for inclusion in last month’s issue, but still important
enough in its small way to be worth noting, the panel debate
put together for the Outside In Festival, by promoters
Serious/Speakout and The Wire , hinted at something unex¬
pected and exciting. Far too soon to sit back smugly, but is it
that there’s a groundswell of mutual understanding out here
on the embattled margins of non- and not-quite-mainstream
music culture?

There was always a danger, after all, that the thing would
turn into a self-righteous whinge-fest. Times are hard; even if
a little government money can be diverted from egg-on-face
Foreign Exchange foolishness, it’s going to be earmarked for
speedy-return value-for-money projects; in such days, as the
pie shrinks, there’s the danger that the opera-nazis simply start
name-calling and duking it out with the trad-jazz Stalinists for
the biggest offcut pie-slice, each noisily, deafly insistent that
their bag is civilisation’s cultural saviour.

I was on the panel, so I’m not going to pretend to be a
disinterested, objective reporter. Still, I wasn’t alone in feeling
that such a border war of All Against All is for the moment off
the agenda. Those who attended could just have aired their
profound differences over strategy: how to keep their projects
going, or arts projects generally; what’s worth keeping going,
and what should go to the wall. Instead there seemed to be a
very present willingness to listen to each other; to find out how
we could variously help one another; to find out what there is

The consensus demon in the conference room was still the

confusion of cultural value with commercial success — the fact,
as one or two speakers put it, that a demand for instant
break-even Financial success, means costly but potentially
worthwhile projects “aren’t allowed initial space to fail.” Less
recognised (because recognition involves an admission of
failure, to communicate, to justify) are the .reasons mainstream
politics and public opinion have for the moment turned to
commercial success as their yardstick of value - there’s simply
no agreement among serious cultural opinion-makers like
ourselves about what - apart from sales — might constitute
cultural success.

In other words, a cash-guzzling prestige bash like Covent
Garden will continue to garner funding because its disappear¬
ance strikes even those who loathe opera as somehow vaguely
deplorable, a diminishment: a pretty negative, blackmailing
kind of a definition of cultural value, but clearly one that still
has political force. For musics that can’t draw on this kind of
celebrity-for-the-sake-of-celebrity status, that have no
hundred-year-tradition to point blandly to for validation, the
chances of gaining public attention - of entering the political
debate - may seem thinner than ever.

All the more reason to enter it. It’s up to us to persuade
people who hate our various kinds of music, when aware of
them at all, that their survival is nonetheless entirely in their
interests. The argument must be taken to the unconverted.
That’s a tall order — but I don’t think it means more than
going aggressively public with our own deep reasons for
committing ourselves to music that resists the simplicities of
most mass success. Some of these reasons will certainly turn
out, in the brutal light of such wider discussion, to be less
noble than we thought, more escapist, more ignorantly elitist
(some mass success is culturally deserved). I have no doubt that
other, better reasons, reasons with genuine moral - democratic
- force, will be found to co-exist with them, still to be
explored, still to be communicated.

The Wire is of course the only magazine that allows the
many scattered strands of off-mainstream music and culture to
speak to one another (and to the many intelligent pockets of
pop culture itself); however tentative and poorly-formed this
dialogue still is. As a try-out zone for arguments about
cultural, as opposed to purely commercial success, we couldn't
be more perfectly placed, in fact. As much as anything,
argument is what this magazine is for. MARK SINKER

7=WIRE

NOW’S

THE TIME presents

?SWIRE

9SWIRE

NOW’S

THE TIME presents

CHRISTIAN McBRIDE: Double Bass

roswiRE

I New Releases From

Virgin Specialist Labels

(all previously unheard), featuring th<
heaviest, most explorative Crimson

72IWIRE

elevations

Reggie Workman

ETHIC

Reggie Workman has played bass
with outfits right across the
spectrum — from The Jazz
Messengers to Company Week.
Ben Watson asks him why.
Gino Sprio poses the questioned .

His phrase is “shaping futuristic concepts in music”.
In the current climate of consumer-friendly jazz, such words
have a defiant ring. Coming from someone with his pedigree -
a roll call of neoconservative love-objects, including Art
Blakey, Yusef Lateef and John Coltrane - this defiance is both
informed and well timed. His presence at Derek Bailey’s
Company Week - London’s 15-year old international festival
of free improvisation — demonstrated his refusal to let the
music stand still (and occasioned this article). The mind
behind those sonorous, supple, golden bass notes is inquisi¬
tive, omnivorous, hungry for new sounds.

Michael Cuscuna’s promise to release the Coltrane Quartet’s
complete November 1961 Village Vanguard sessions as a
Mosaic box set, sessions which feature Workman, looks likely
to confirm Workman’s stature as a creative player. But his
musical odyssey began in Philadelphia, where he was born in
1937.

“Philadelphia was one hell of an environment for music. It
came to me strongly later on, stepping away and looking at it
again, they had everybody and everything there. So many
great musicians. My father had a restaurant. You’d hear all
kinds of great music on the jukebox, old 78s. That’s where
we’d hear all the latest stuff — Billie Holiday and Charlie
Parker, all the big band stuff, the Louis Jordan stuff, all the
popular blues and all the Nat Cole — you name it! Art Tatum
was on the jukebox. It’s funny how that just slipped away from
our society, because it became so commercial - they began

that was a sad result.”

He does not agree that recorded music has displaced a
playing culture. Involved with education and running work¬
shops, he insists that brilliant young players keep surfacing.
Talent doesn’t come from nowhere: people are playing, but
they are not getting enough support.

Workman played classical music in the Philadelphia All

City Orchestra, but also played R&B (for this he used electric
bass, but didn’t pursue it because he felt outclassed by Jazz
Messenger Jymie Merritt, whose electric playing was
“tremendous”). He regards with bemusement the problems
many classical trainees have with improvisation.

“It never struck me as a problem, it’s part of the language
we speak, it’s a natural phenomenon as far as people I grew up
with are concerned. That doesn’t discount discipline on your
instrument. Improvising is just something you do — we do it
in our everyday lifestyle, we do it in our way of being and we
do it when we pick up our instrument, it’s no different.”

In some ways Company Week can be seen as an
extension of the freedoms jazz players took in the 60s.
Involved with one its chief movers — Coltrane - was Workman
ever anxious that the music would alienate the black audience?

“The community was very hip at the time, the community
knew what was happening. They knew when something was
real, they knew when it had a solid base and they knew if it
was technically great. There was no problem with the com¬
munity back then. In those days you had jobs in clubs that
would last for a month - every night, six nights a week for a

with the whole strain of the country, it ran along with the
natural evolution of a people. You give people something they
can relate to, they will listen, they will develop with it, they
will grow with it.”

The regular availability of live music (where word of mouth
can bring in audiences for an act that might not be a “name”) is
often left out of the equation by those who switch from Dire
Straits or Michael Jackson to a late Trane track and ask how
any non-specialist is going to put up with that racket.
Workman also reckons there was a political element to the
suppression of the new music.

“You look at the Hoover/Warren syndrome that took out
everyone who was causing the people to think, and be, and
have an adverse mentality, and you’ll see that lots of effort was
spent to make sure people went back to sleep, join the Rip Van
Winkle society once again - in order to keep the people who
are in power comfortable.”

Audiences are sometimes shocked that Workman
is not still playing the hard bop he played with the Jazz
Messengers or Herbie Mann. He maintains that there is
continuity in his development as a player, just that the
mass-marketed music of the 70s broke his links with the
audience.

“I mean I never stopped. They stopped because the media
said, now you must start listening to Kenny G and David
Sanborn and George Benson and this is jazz, and I never

742WIRE

Reggie Workman

16 SWIRE

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The UK return of a
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THE CHEMISTRY OF SOUND,
DRUG AND DREAM

Nothing stirs emotions like music. Nothing stirs
emotions like drugs. Put the two together . . .
and maybe at the very least you begin to get a
picture of how and why each has taken the explosive

-public and
today. From bebop t<
tual to rock and rave.

hold they have
underground imagin
HipHop, from shams

on-the-edge creativity may always have been
enhanced (or retarded, depending on your
viewpoint) by the narcotically induced altered
Over the new few pages we attempt to
: a few facts from the myths and
disinformation, the scaremongering and piety,
the romanticism and pleasure- seeking that
surround the cultures of alteration.

BACK FROM ANOTHER

LONICALLY ALTERED STATES OI
ALTERED STATES EVERYONE El

WORLD

Stockhausen in 1952, aged 24, in Paris, at Pierre Schaeffer’s
Studio For Musique Concrete, tape-splice editing years before
it was either popular or profitable (a dreary scissors-and-paste
task that in those days could still only be achieved with

process and outcome:

. I synchronised two of my spliced tapes using two
playback tape recorders, recorded the sum on a third tape
recorder and copied this result again — depending on the

hearing two synchronised layers, and even more so hearing
three or four layers, I became increasingly pale and helpless: I
had imagined something completely different!”

The sounds he hears confuse and exhilarate him: this is his
(longlost, recently rediscovered) Etude, three and a quarter
minutes of turbulent stuttering grind, piano strings struck
with a metal bar, treated, looped and layered till they sound

:s of white

Already upon

221WIRE

like a granular creaking rip in the cosmic fabric, and alien
shapes coming tumbling through. Before this, no one had
simply flicked a switch to hear something so new, so
unimaginably unplanned and yet so whole, so real. Simple
salon piano-ness has vanished forever — in its place begins to
stir an utterly transformed expectation of the weaving of
noise-texture in imaginary studio space.

Throughout the 50s, through Studien l & II, Gesang Der
Junglinge and Kontakte, Stockhausen’s parallel electronic uni¬
verses multiplied, ordered — harmonically, rhythmically,
melodically — by systems entirely of his own, fevered, pioneer¬
ing devising, in the shifting space-shapes that even the earliest
echo-delay machines convincingly brought into being.

Stockhaus<

geometry

ving, flickering.

Happy Days without the grin. No
Lear of Modern Music, hair awry ai
Own (Lost) Domain, reaching for e

Pop Kids, Just Say NO!

But for every straight oldworider, committed to the Pang-
sian belief that our solid foursquare civilised reality wasn’t
t the best of all possible worlds, but in fact the only possible
rid, there was suddenly a generation who wanted freer,
ter, stranger spaces to play in, and thought they were
ching glimpses of them.

Gesang der Junglinge. Youth’s Song indeed: Break on through

not something pre ordained, by God .
: hipped you into the physical logic or tl

Inner Space. Aldous Huxley was at that very moment switch¬
ing &lgefly to (recently synthesised) LSD from the (natural)
peyote chat - 50 years before him - had intrepid but
respectable philosophy-of-mind iconoclasts like Havelock Ellis
hymning. And 50 years before that, the Romantic Poets were
bitsy dropping timihjtre of opium, for inspirational dreams and
reduced life-expectancy.

Meanwhile, beyond the (Western/Christian) pale, a
thousand rival traditions of intoxicated trance-visionaries dis¬
tilled their creation-tales from the effects of this or that
indigenous dreamweed; a million little local Orpheuses,
maybe not on the underground, but on something, singing into

23SWIRE

Junk Bonds

t SWIRE

Junk Bonds

Musicians, historians and critics are in agreement, with all
pointing to Charlie Parker as the reason why so many
musicians took up heroin use. When alto saxophonist Frank
Morgan first shot up at age 17, he felt that taking it was a rite
of bop initiation: “I couldn’t wait to tell Bird, to let him know
that I had become a member of the club,” he told People
magazine in 1987. At first Parker lectured his young protege,

brought along some heroin and cocaine. Bird was ready to

party.

Charlie Parker was the jazz version of Orson Welles - the
good life was never done in moderation. He raided the steam
tables at Hector’s Cafeteria, scarfing down trencherman quan¬
tities of food after gigs along 52nd Street. He had a huge
sexual appetite as well; he’d sometimes invite friends up to a
hotel room to watch him with his latest conquest. And of
course, even the music was larger than life. “What you miss in
Charlie Parker’s playing if you never saw him in person is just
how loud he played,” comments San Francisco poet David
Meltzer. “I mean, it filled up Birdland. I understand that he
used the thickest reed for his mouthpiece.”

He may have been the world’s best-known heroin addict,
but Parker seemed to have the ability to get on and off junk
fairly easily, with significant stretches when he was clean.
However, when he wasn’t taking drugs, he was imbibing vast
quantities of booze, the hard stuff, whiskey. In fact, drink — in
contrast to the popular myth of the Parker OD - significantly
contributed to his death. “Oddly, after the OD deaths of
musicians like Sonny Berman and Freddie Webster,” says
Morgenstern, “it seems that most of the addicted musicians
‘managed’ their habits to the extent that they could function as
musicians.” Such known addicts as Bud Powell, Tad Damer-
on, Philly Joe Jones and Sonny Stitt managed not to OD, at
least not fatally; their lives were cut short by other circumst-

Although the British bebop community had a
similar history of heroin addiction among its ranks, American
law enforcement took a much harder line on drug addiction.
Whereas the UK allowed the apomorphine treatment (which
William Burroughs would hail as a cure) and permitted
physicians to prescribe heroin to addicts, American drug
enforcers treated addicts as deviants and criminals. The 50s
were a period of moral rearmament in the USA, whose
citizenry seemed to see the Soviet menace in every societal
margin. In 1951, it appears that drug addiction was recog¬
nized as a “problem” beginning to affect white teenagers.
Popular magazines were filled with lurid exposes, and dutiful¬
ly began carrying the drug busts of well-known jazz musi¬
cians. A May 29, 1957 New York Post headline announces:

DRUG ROUNDUP NETS 131 HERE IN 24 HOURS. In the
third paragraph we read of the arrest of John (Jackie) McLean,
25, of 284 E. Houston St. for felonious possession of one
eighth of an ounce of heroin. “I’m glad I got collared,” McLean
apparently told the cops. “Now I can get a cure.”

The Cure: Lexington Federal Prison, which had so many
jazz musicians in its narcotics hospital, that the hip used to
kiddingly say: “To get the best band, go to Kentucky.” The
Cure: Synanon (a legendary treatment centre). The Cure: Cold
Turkey. Cold Turkey the Miles Davis way: “I laid down and
stared at the ceiling for 12 days and cursed everybody I didn’t
like. I was kicking it the hard way. It was like a bad case of the
flu, only worse. I lay in a cold sweat. My nose and eyes ran. I
threw up everything I tried to eat. My pores opened up and I
smelled like chicken soup. Then it was over.” Unlike cocaine,
marijuana and speed, heroin had no discernable rooting section
advocating it. And unlike our slap-happy era of 12-Step
treatments and Betty Ford Clinics, musicians avoided talking
about their addictions in public. An extended absence from
the scene would be attributed to “personal problems”. When
Miles Davis and Art Blakey were busted in Los Angeles in
September 1950 on heroin possession charges, downbeat did
not print the story. Even death by OD was covered up - the
causerie on one young, promising bass player was “he died of
the 20th century”.

The presence of heroin in the jazz community created a
stigmatized community that, like many outsider groups,
celebrated their apartness from the straight world. Song titles
such as “Smack Up”, “No Room For Squares”, and “The Scene
Is Clean” sent a small hello to fellow users and a Keep Out sign
to the straight community. Addicted musicians, notoriously
unreliable sidemen, banded together in all-junkie bands led by
an addicted bandleader. One record label, Prestige, became
known as “the junkie’s label”. Musicians in need of fast cash
(which was most of the time), knew the day when Prestige
recorded at Rudy Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio. Unlike the
Blue Note label. Prestige did not offer rehearsal time for
recording sessions, preferring the spontaneity and cheapness of
a studio blowing date. A look at the Prestige discography
reveals odd trumpet/guitar and tuba/tenor frontlines, less the
result of a producer’s imagination than the reality of who
happened to have been at the studio that day.

Did jazz musicians play better high on heroin? I have
never seen any evidence proving such a thesis: but of course
many musicians needed to shoot up simply to function as a
musician. However, some musicians functioned at higher
levels than others — like Charlie Parker. Hampton Hawes, in
his autobiography Raise Up Off Me, described watching Bird

cans and liquor bottles. Watched him line up and take down

25§WIRE

Junk Bonds

eleven shots of whiskey, pop a handful of bennies, then tie off,
smoking a joint at the same time. He sweated like a horse for
five minutes, got up, put on his suit and a half hour later was
on the stand playing strong and beautiful.” As they say in
certain (American) circles, it’s hard to argue with success.

Did the sound and structure of bebop mimic the effect of a
heroin rush? Bassist Gene Ramey claimed that “with heroin
came the idea that guys had to play with a straight sound, a
symphonic sound.” Some critics have connected the expansive,
bee in a jar quality of classic early bop and the euphoria that
comes after shooting up.

On perhaps in the opposite direction, could Bill Evans’ slow
tempos and inward lyricism have reflected the mindset of a
junkie on the nod? Gene Lees, in Meet Me At Jim And Andy’s ,
offers a sympathetic and intimate portrait of Evans’ adult-long
problems with heroin. Evans’ usual daily routine was to go to a
phone booth and leaf through his address book, calling up
friends who he could borrow money from. Once Bob Brook-
meyer, after feeling the touch one too many times, yelled over
the phone: “How come you only call when you need money?!"

huge amounts of money for his habit — much to the consterna¬
tion of friends and professional associates. Creed Taylor, who
signed Evans to a lucrative contract at Verve, sent Gene Lees to
offer his star pianist the following conditions: that he would
pay for his basic expenses if he would seek hospitalized
treatment for his addiction. Evans had his response. “You
people don’t understand!” he told Lees. “I’m kind of attached
to shit.” Lees, a close friend, responded, “Bill, that may
qualify as the understatement of the year.” “No I mean it. You
don’t understand,” Evans retorted. “It’s like death and trans¬
figuration. Every day you wake in pain like death, and then
you go out and score, and that is transfiguration. Every day
becomes all of life in microcosm.”

I asked the poet-drummer Clark Coolidge why so many
musicians were addicts in the 50s, given that no one was naive
about heroin’s pernicious qualities. Coolidge, a high school
chum of Alvin Curran, who’d gigged with Buell Neidlinger in
his native Providence, Rhode Island and was part of the
legendary psychedelic band Serpent Power, commented:
“Among the musicians I hung out with, there was a concept of
getting ‘out there’ in order to play well. ‘Out there’ meaning
getting beyond the 9-to-5 world, the neat front lawn and the
dark blue suit. Well, getting on junk was, no doubt, the
fastest way to divorce yourself from the straight life." Confirm¬
ing Coolidge’s observation is a comment found in a remarkable
survey by psychologist Charles Winick, The Use of Drugs by
Jazz Musicians - the only study of its kind. One musician

closet. It lets you concentrate and takes you away from

everything. Heroin is a working drug, like the doctor who
took it because he had a full schedule so he could concentrate
better. It lets me concentrate on my sound.” Out there,

Winick’s study has other interesting findings. He noted
that 67% of heroin using musicians were white — a figure that
contradicts popular mythology of a small army of black jazz
junkies. Perhaps white jazz musicians, doubly outsiders,
needed to get out there more desperately than their black
colleagues - who were at least within their cultural milieu. Of
course white jazz musicians, by virtue of their skin privilege,
could score more discreetly and were less the target of
policemen looking to bust musicians. The notorious New
York City Cabaret cards (which denied club work to musicians
with drug convictions) affected mostly black musicians.

Winick also estimates that out of perhaps 5000 working
jazz musicians in New York City in 1955, about 700 to 800
were regular users of heroin. A large number for sure, but far
from the perception we have today that every 50s bopper was

death of Charlie Parker marked the end of the popularity of
heroin in the jazz community. Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis and
John Coltrane all beat their habits in this period and went on
to record their seminal late 50s/early 60s recordings. Other
musicians simply outgrew their habits — a maturing which
often happens in the mid to late 30s. By the mid-60s, Archie
Shepp would be reciting an anti-drug poem called “Skag”
(“where the tracks are/the money ain’t”) - something that
would hardly have been included on a mid-50s Blue Note
recording.

Jazz is no longer the outlaw music it was. Most musicians
these days develop their chops in a college jazz program.
Presidents hug Cecil Taylor and Branford Marsalis plays
Thelonious Monk tunes as segues on the Tonight show. And -
Good Grief! — a presidential candidate tries to play the changes
on “God Bless The Child” as proof of his populist appeal.

Lorenzo Thomas, a poet and literary critic, noted in a recent
issue of African American Review that “Jazz is an overdose of
reality.” Following this, it might be possible to argue that the
radical nature of heroin matched the radical proposition of
bebop to the musicians of that era. “Getting high, and so on,
that was always the danger,” recalled trumpeter Benny Bailey.
“A lot of cats were trying to be like Charlie Parker, including
myself, to see how high they could get. That was a pretty
dangerous period.” And, perhaps, the phenomenon of heroin
addiction is most simply explained in a much more elliptic
manner by one who knew both ends of the bridge. Miles
Davis: “Music is an addiction. ” ■

26SWIRE

Stockhausen continued from page 23

But there’s a counter-argument: that the whole modern
thing would never even have started — that without the
pre-jazz Age cocaine boom, we’d still all be listening to
Caruso and Sousa and John McCormack. That without
prohibition-era booze in the 20s, smack from the 30s, speed

from the 60s, amyl nitrate in the 70s, the MDA-derivatives in

all these years, the necessary seismic shifts in listening
sensibility would simply not have come about. Music would

of Walter Carlos' Swiuhed-On Bach (of course, ^e’s Wendy
Carlos now - you don’t get much more “altered” than that).

Drugs were portals to other cultures, symbols of access to
different, dissident value systems. Romance with such forbid¬
den zones exists alongside stark, unreasoning (racist) terror of
same: they’re two sides of the same coin. Wars on drugs bear
all too considerable moral/opportunistic resemblance to wars
on political and/or sexual dissidence, on minority cultures,
religions or race groups: coca from South America; opium and
derivatives from the Far and/or Middle East; only the familiar,

Dark fears, deferred or displaced desires and romances:
everyone knows that music trades with similar forces. Music

skeins of uncommunicable tribal experience, its togethernesses
and its exclusions, as if there are states of being — of beatitude
- that some were hip to, and others never could be. Some will

them — want desperately to be allowed in, back in to the
warm. Everyone knows people who went out there, and didn’t
find a way back. And the question isn’t always how did they
get there, and should they have checked they had a return
ticket, so much as, did they want to come back?

of hearing, seeing, thinking — is that there’s a way back, that
it is only temporary. It shows you places, but it doesn’t strand
you there. For others, this is simply a proof that it isn’t “real”,

all the horrible real world things that they want ended. ■

JOE

Joe Henderson’s

Lush Life

HENDERSON

“Collector’s item . . .
magnificent” ch.ser

LUSH LIFE

The Music of Hilly Strayhorn

r •

“A masterpiece" ™.wir.

“The most respected
tenorman in jazz" vo«

Now hear it.

' cr «*<-

And hear Joe live
at the Docklands
Jazz Festival,

Cabot Hall, 7.30 pm
30 October. _

Ticketmaster: 071 379 4444 f] , \

(\m)

A PolyGram Jazz release.

■28SWIRE

Rap & Drugs

“Light Another”, “Stoned Is The Way of The Walk” and
“Something For the Blunted”, told the story. “Light Another”
("Can you feel the effects of the high?") became the hit track, an
anthem, a joyful celebration of being high — the track “Funky
Cypress Hill Shit” made their music and weed one. They
opened the door and new groups followed: Redman, (“How To
Roll A Blunt”), The Pharcyde (“Pack The Pipe”) and Gold-
money ("W-E-E-D”).

High was out in the open, and better for it. Cypress Hill
had broken new ground; the illegality of what they were doing
didn’t phase their presentation. Calling themselves the ‘bud-
dha masters’ with lyrics like “ When I smoke my joint, I feel one
with the earth," there was no stopping them. Cleverly, their

spokesmen for Hemp. They did interviews, spoke at rallies,
explained how marijuana wasn’t bad for you. They pointed out

2.9 SWIRE

Rap & Drugs

JOsWIRE

Rap & Drugs

nally for years. They spoke of its relaxation effects and even

raised some good arguments. The law left them alone and let
their record thrive - record sales are close to one million in the
United States alone. They are doing something right. Politi¬
cally incorrect, they nonetheless found their niche, without

"Just say no,” the White House War-On-Drugs catch-
phrase, had long been a joke. Back in the ghetto, black-on-

D, KRS-1 and many others thought much more needed to be
said to stop drugs, and they began to say it. Public Enemy’s “1
Million Bottle Bags" (from their Apocalypse '91: The Enemy

Malt Liquor.

Although not a drug in the usual sense, for Chuck D Malt
Liquor is the first phase of the get-high process. He was one of

made of. He was also bold enough to ask why you couldn’t buy
it in white neighbourhoods: "But look watch Shorty get sicker!
Year after yearlWhile he’s thinkin’ it’s beer!But it’s not but he got it
in his gut/So what the fuck ,” he roared.

Meanwhile, KRS-1 of Boogie Down Productions came at

wise up!organize a business, so we can rise up .” If anything, this is
an even more provocative message. KRS-1, known for coming

stress the question of how dealers use the money — to explore
what they can subsequently (respectably?) make of themselves.
Ditto Ice Cube, talking directly to the dealer: “Yo, you made
some money, but what did you do wit yo’ money? Did you
take the money and build a supermarket in the community?
Nah, you went and bought some gold Cadillacs. You ain’t no

white man . . . ’cause you exploiting us like he

Drugs now run the inner cities, and few American families,
of any socio-economic or educational level (but especially
Black families) escape their effects. De La Soul’s autobiog¬
raphical “My Brother’s A Basehead” is a perfect example - the
story of how close the drug problem can get rang painfully
familiar to many listeners. On this emotionally charged track,
the rapper describes baseheads (and by implication his brother)
as "the lowest of all things that exist." Brand Nubian’s “Slow
Down” speaks similarly directly and disapprovingly to a
drugged-out girlfriend: “ Your ways and actions are like those of a
savagelwhat’s really scary is you’re somebody’s daughter!you’re livin’
foul," he raps. Rappers feel strongly about drugs.

Houston’s Geto Boys saw it as a question of subject matter
and tempo. When they released “Mind’s Playing Tricks On
Me,” last year, the blunted sound seemed to take a different
turn. Bushwick Bill’s slow twangy delivery, and the very fact

song a major pop radio hit. He was talking about hallucina¬
tions, caused by the paranoia of being a drug dealer. He was
telling a compelling tale of fear and desperation. The track felt
like a bad trip: "Day by day, it’s more impossible to cope/I feel like

Drugs were to HipHop what HipHop was to America, but
no more. The hype is fading. Only the exceptions (The
Cypress Hills of the world) will be able to get away with
singing the praises of narcotics. A new collective conscience in
running through the Black and the rap community, which
wouldn’t allow it. Discussion of drugs will increasingly be an

HipHop is now pop culture in America, used by every arm
of the media to sell all kinds of products no longer necessarily
aimed at the underclass. And there is a new drug in the ghetto:
HipHop itself. The same three tiers of the drug community
(users, dealers and adversaries,) exist in HipHop and are
becoming more prominent; with the mainstream radio and
press (the adversaries) in particular trying to thwart the growth
and implications of what has become a powerful cultural

Whereas drugs used to get you out of the ghetto, mentally
and/or financially, now they just leave you there to die.
HipHop replaces them. There have never been as many demo
tapes being made in inner cities of hopeful rap acts. These are
kids who end up hating and resenting school, having seen
their peers make it without school’s help. This is an industry
that is employing armies of young, if not brilliant, then

houses, video outlets, video production studios, record stores,
radio stations, newspapers, etc ... the desperation with

flocked to^Buddha’.

If rap music is addictive, the reason is simple. It is the new
ticket out of the ghetto. It’s picking up where drugs left off.
HipHop is taking kids off the streets and giving them a
purpose. It can’t go away. Digital Underground’s Shock G
said it best: "It’s a good thing that we’re rappin’Hf it wasn’t for the
rappin ’ we’d be mackingIGood thing we got music!If not we’re stuck
with finding a way to get ahead!And then we got to use it. ” ■

37IWIRE

Shamanism

techniques

OF ECSTASY

Bel Air female shamans healing Hollywood glitterati and
Robert Bly’s neo-shamanic hairy drumming men, the term
shaman is becoming a 90s buzzword, superceding yuppie. Like
bodybuilding, financial speculation or champagne, shamanism
has the potential to offer quick and easy access to, if not power
itself, then the illusion of it.

There are two schools of thought about the relevance of

performance. Can the capacity of a contemporary performer to
transport his or her audience be linked back through the

altered consciousness, using sounds like on “Transcendental” ,
samples of real shamans wailing and stuff like that. The
desired effect is to create a bit of madness in the sound."

“Re-evolution”, a track from the band’s Boss Drum album,
promotes the idea of evolutionary consciousness to be achieved

psychedelic plant drugs. This entry into underworlds, spirit
worlds or the hidden areas of consciousness bears a certain
similarity to the process of sampling, which has the (rarely
realised) potential to open windows onto snapshot sound-

2HWIRE

Shamanism

33SWIRE

Shamanism

Witch of the west, teenage werewolves, Rod Hull and Emu,

book. The Death and Resurrection Show: From Shaman to Super-
star : . . it is the infernal geography of showbiz which is its
most significant feature.” Quite.

Tucker follows this line of reasoning, making connections

Hendri

John Coltrane, Van and (inevitably) Jim Morrison.

Like Oliver Stone, who portrayed Moi
of shamanic wisdom in The Doors , Michael Tucker is infatuated

five) archaic knowledge to take an audience by the scruff of its
neck and deliver it into cosmic dimensions. He quotes Doors
organist Ray Manzerak’s judgement of Morrison as “the
electric shaman” without scepticism (as if Manzerak could
objectively put aside his self-interest in the Doors myth). My
own perception from seeing Morrison perform with The Doors
was that he seemed a cheap, lifeless and faintly absurd

i the \

rainforest of South

a proper perspective: a
pop/rock star glossing his persona with poetry derived from
The Golden Bough and other myth sources.

The “wounded healer” archetype of the shaman can be fitted
to the biographical profile of Morrison, although a degree of
professional myth making (in Stone’s case) or naivety (in
Stone’s case) is needed to brush aside Morrison’s uncontrolled
self-destruction or his shortcomings as a performer. Tucker’s
focus on the importance of shamanistic themes in song lyrics
inflates our usually indifferent perception of the (sung) word at

For Tucker, &

they really “negate imagination”? Musically, they hi
course contributed to the contraction of possibilities >
mainstream pop, yet compared to the slobbish, over-’
Morrison, Madonna is a powerful postmodern shaman,
her bewildering capacity for rebirth through symbolic
manipulation, her conscious pursuit of myth creation
instinctual but quite probably learned also through r<
Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Ma
has the power to lead her audience through the looking
(though where she leads them is another question).

the witch process in Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath ),
touch a nerve running deeper than the dismissive aesthetic
judgements and personal abuse routinely directed against her?

Michael Jackson’s radical approach to surgical and electronic
self-transformation engenders equal hostility. Jackson’s ecsta¬
tic themes of the late 70s ("Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough”)
may have degenerated into a limp and unconvincing global
altruism, but his explorations of transmutation are fascinating.

norphing” sequence of the video for

>r White

lesjacl

during w
is if by mag

ssing

before your very eyes) to slide
from human form into animal, Mark Dery has argued (in
Cyborging the Body Politic, Mondo 2000) that: “Black or
White” tells another story, one told by Terminator 2 as well:
that of the cyborg, a postmodern monster whose physiology
reconciles technoculture and nature, dystopia and Arcadia,
simulacrum and original. The cyborg signifies biology mor¬
phed by technology, a playfully perverse notion that permeates
technocultural discourse.”

As Michael Jackson has dedicated his life and body to the

idity of ordinary existence, re-engaging in imaginary space.

virtually nobody has seen it) expresses a frustration and
boredom with the objects of the tangible world. Although
both poles of the shamanic music antagonism are immersed in

trances of shamanism and the intangible worlds they unfold,
the archetype of the physically human present-day shama

o have

hold any mystery, only disillusionme
more powerfully through the invisible
machine interface. “Cyborgs are ether
in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. For tl
for the cyborg, all that is solid me

?SWIRE

Has life become a nightmare?

As THE CHEMICAL PURITY OF THE RAVE-GENERATIONS DRUG-OF-CHOICE DECLINES, IS THE MUSIC
DEGENERATING TOO? SlMON REYNOLDS TALKS ADULTERATION AND THE MEANING OF SPEED:
‘ArDKORE TEKNO JUST ACCELERATES, REGARDLESS.

“Too much speed is comparable to too much light . . . we see nothing" (last count: 140-150 bpm) soar in sync with pulse rates and

“acid house” they misconstrued it. In Chicago, the word “acid”
derived from “acid burn”, slang for ripping off someone’s idea
(i.e. by sampling it). In Britain, it was instantly assumed that

E and LSD both activate the Tight-or-flight’ sector of the

an edgy exhilaration on the borderline of panic reaction: “are
you feeling w-w-w-wobbly???”, as Xenophobia’s “The Wob¬
bler” enquires, rhetorically. ’Ardkore is just another form of

“acid” mean psychedelics. Acid house became the soundtrack
to the Ecstasy Rave-olution, another prime example of British

set-up: after four years of the music, it has evolved into a
science of inducing and amplifying the E-rush (rather than
vice-versa). What’s more, the vibe has changed (from trancen-
dance to mental-manic) as ecstasy has become adulterated with
amphetamine, or simply replaced - by pseudo-E concoctions
of speed, LSD and who knows what. The subculture’s meta¬
bolism has been chemically altered, till the beats-per-minute

fin de siecle “panic culture”: hence the frequent samples of
sirens, the ambuscades of sound, the MC chant “cornin’ at
ya!”. There’s even a track titled “Start The Panic”. (The
original Greek panic, the “Panic Fear” of the horned god Pan,
was a transport of ecstasy-beyond-terror.) Speedy E has
changed the whole vibe of rave culture, from celebration to a
sort of aggressive euphoria. The urge to merge and the urge to
surge fuse in a raging oceanic feeling. Dancers’ faces are

smile; they glare with a crazed, blazing impudence.

It’s the most brazenly druggy subculture in ages, even less

351WIRE

J7SWIRE

’Ardkore Tekno

sub-individual part (a limb, a hand cocked like a pistol) is a
cog in a collective desiring machine.

The dancefloor has become a primal DNA soup. It’s pagan
too, this digital Dionysian derangement whose goal is asylum
in madness. (Hence the slang of “mental” and “nutty”, sound
systems with names like Bedlam, groups with names like
Lunarci, MCs chanting “off my fucking tree” — mild pejora-
tives turned into desirable states-of-mindlessness.)

It’s emotionally regressive too (as all the musically progres¬
sive genres of the last decade — rap, oceanic rock, noise — have
been): witness the infantilism of ravers sucking dummies, and
bubblegum chart hits like “A Trip To Trumpton”, “Sesame’s
Treet”, The Prodigy’s “Charly”. As Virilio reminds us,
“Child-society frequently utilises turnings, spinning around,
disequilibrium. It looks for sensations of vertigo and disorder
as sources of pleasure.” He cites the childhood game of
spinning round and round, in order to create “a dizziness that
reduced (the] environment to a sort of luminous chaos.”

Virilio’s book is a jeremiad about an emergent culture based
around “picnolepsy”, his term for frequent, incredibly brief
ruptures in consciousness. “Picnolepsy” is a kind of pun on
epilepsy, which Websters defines as a disorder “marked by
disturbed electrical rhythms of the central nervous system and
typically manifested by convulsive attacks usually with cloud¬
ing of consciousness.” (my italics] (Epilepsy, incidentally, was
a sacred malady for the Greeks.) ’Ardkore is poised somewhere
on a brink between picnolepsy and epilepsy. We know that
strobes (the staple of rave lightshows) can cause convulsions:
’Ardkore is the aural analogue of the strobe, a sequence of
frozen stop-motion soundbites that have been artificially

re-animated with E-lectricity.

“With the irregularity of the epileptic space, defined by

longer a matter of tension or attention, but of suspension pure
and simple (by acceleration), disappearance and effective
reappearance of the real, departure from duration.” Virilio
could be writing about the rave scene in 1992. This is the
feeling that The KLF caught with the title (if not the sound) of
“3 AM Eternal”. Speed reproduces the effects of picnolepsy, a
“perpetually repeated hijacking of the subject from any
You’re gone, totally out of it. And
for some epileptics of an
‘a special state of happiness, a juvenile
exhilaration.” “Sublime" wrote Dostoevski, a sufferer, “for
that moment you’d give your whole life ... At that moment I
understood the meaning of that singular expression: there will

Such juvenile “nihilism” is the reason why ’Ardkore per¬
turbs so many. This music is best understood as a neurological
rather than a cultural phenomenon. It abolishes the role of

cultural mediators. Textless, it offers little to interpret in itself
(its subcultural text resides in its effects). Critics who like to
engage with rock ’n’ roll as a surrogate form of literature are
perhaps the most threatened by this anti-humanist noise,

any kind of poetry. But ’Ardkore also challenges those who’ve
seized on the more musicianly participants in rave music to
argue the cause for House and Techno as any kinds of art form.

both amazing and amusing to see how exactly the same
rhetoric used by detractors of 50s rock’n’roll, recurs as a
knee-jerk tic amongst rock fans faced by a new “barbaric
non-music”. Along with the racist notion of “jungle music”
(by interesting coincidence, one of ‘Ardkore’s big sub-genres
this year is known as “jungle”), one of the things most feared
about rock’n’roll was its extreme repetitiveness. Which is
exactly what the anti-’Ardkore enclaves bemoan. Repetition is
a psychoactive agent in itself, of course. Anyway, to those who
insist that ‘Ardkore “just isn’t music”, I won’t argue (I
couldn’t care less). But I do know that every new development
in pop - from punk to rap to acid house — has initially been
greeted with similar spasms of fear and loathing.

In the late 60s and early 70s, British groups bastardised
the blues, and their American imitators bastardised their
bastardisation, and somewhere in all this was spawned heavy
metal. In the late 80s, black Europhiles from Chicago and
Detroit took Teutonic electronic music and turned it into
House and Techno; in the early 90s, British youth took these
styles and birthed a furher mutant, mongrel form: ’Ardkore.
Veterans of 1988’s First Wave of Rave denounce ’Ardkore in
exactly the same language that counterculture vets decried
metal - as soul-less, macho, bombastic, proto-fascist, a
corrupt and degraded version of a once noble tradition.
They’ve even been calling ’Ardkore “the new heavy metal”.
With the same piety wherein people once harked back to
Cream to deplore Sabbath and Led Zep, similarly, rave
cognoscenti mourn Derrick May and flinch from the brutalism
of Beltram and 2 Bad Mice. Some have even erected the
concept of “Progressive House” (The Future Sound Of London,
The Orb, Guerilla Records) as a bulwark of good taste against
the hooligan hordes of ’Ardkore. History shows us that the
despised Black Sabbath subsequently went on to be perhaps
the biggest influence on underground rock in the 80s and 90s
(from The Fall and Black Flag through the Butthole Surfers to
Seattle grunge), while ProgRockers Jethro Tull, ELP and Pink
Floyd went on to influence practically nobody.

“Maturation” was always only one possible route of develop¬
ment for the music of the post-aciiied diaspora. As heavy metal
with blues rock, ’Ardkore has taken the essence of aciiied and

3S1WIRE

Techno - mind-less repetition, stroboscopic synths, bass-
quake frequencies - and coarsened and intensified it. Just as
with metal, bad drugs (barbiturates then, dodgy E now) have
helped them focus on that essence. In a way, 'Ardkore actually
presents a kind of degraded avant-gardism, of arrested futur¬
ism: headless chickens running wild with avant-garde techni¬
ques (timbral/textural/spatial invention rather than melodic/
harmonic development, drone theory, extreme repetition/
extreme randomness, musique concrete, etc), though of course it
has no idea how to build with them. But ’Ardkore advances
not through the innovations of auteurs , but rather evolves
through mutation : inspired errors and random fucking about
produces new riffs and noises that succeed in the dancefloor
eco-system and then enter the gene pool. Which explains why,
whenever someone does come up with a new idea, it’s instantly
ripped off a thousand times. Anyway, I wager that those
looking for the next revolution would do better to watch for
what crawls out of the ’Ardkore morass than to carry a torch for
Detroit, or LFO, or Orbital (as inspired as they may all have
been in their day).

’Ardkore is really just the latest twist on the
traditional contours of working class leisure, the latest variant
on the sulphate-fuelled 60-Hour-Weekend of mod and North¬
ern Soul lore. With ’Ardkore, the proletarian culture of
consolation has become a culture of concussion: hence
amnesiac/anaesthetic slang terms for a desirable state of
oblivion like “sledged”, “mashed up”, “cabbaged”, “monged”;
hence song titles like “Blackout” and “Hypnoblast”.

There’s a sampled slice of rap at large in ’Ardkore that goes:
“can’t beat the system/go with the flow.” On one level, it’s just
a boast about how much damage the sound-system can inflict.
But perhaps there’s a submerged political resonance in there
too: amidst the socio-economic deterioration of a Britain well
into its second decade of one-party rule, where alternatives

zone out, to go with the flow, disappear ?

There’s also an inchoate fury in the music, that comes out in an
urge for total release from constraints, a lust for explosive
exhilaration — captured in titles like “Hypergasm”. The ragga
chant of Xenophobia’s “Rush In The House” kicks off: “u come
alive u come alive u come alive”. ’Ardkore frenzy is where the
somnambulist youth of Britain snap out of the living death of
the 90s to grasp at a few moments of fugitive bliss. ’Ardkore
seethes with a RAGE TO LIVE, to cram ail the intensity
absent from a week of drudgery into a few hours of fervour. It’s
a quest to reach escape velocity. Speed-freak youth are literally
running away from their problems. Do you blame them? ■

w 1 -

produced by Jerry ikkxler
featuring Hank Crawford on sax
plus a duet with Steve VWndwood

Live at the

Town and Country Club
November 2nd

398WIRE

Big Star

GREAT

LOST

RECORDINGS

In this month’s edition of our regular feature
on overlooked or forgotten recordings,

Ian Penman recalls Big Star’s legendary
Sister Lovers LP and anatomises the
pharmaceutically-fuelled psyche of its
hoy-wonder creator Alex Chilton

singular star’s life tension all the way from boyhood Box Top through

of the best (but most self-bafflingly belligerent) ever; the verve, nerve

40SW1RE

Big Star

"Big Black Car” is the first track in which he pulls off the central
(so melo it’s mouldy) finds a sort of patched-together salvation in the

replacing Christ’s. Unm

ist for Chilton’s shoute

Of the tw

"Holocaust” is the most infamous, and “Kangaroo” poi

ballads proper: they are etiolated, etched in a ki:
silverpoint, deliberate, drained, spindly, obtuse. "Ho

Hope & Crosby).

with the overlap/dissolve
personally know of no otl

tly appropriate of arrangements - giving it a spacey,
ipenetrable

ly of dreaming: a

stoned shorthand,

trivial distraction!
The great pow

fuzzy and precise, logging thi

mourning or yearning . . .). It is this quality of being fixed inbetween ,
to song) that is articulate through SL - whether Chilton himself is in

\s though he were a troubadour condemned by th
interstate of pop cliches, his task to mould some

ise and prosperous, but I am . . .1 Flustered and erratic."
e was all presence and moment, like a splendid set of fi

me out of here : even I can only take so much of this st

I SWIRE

42SWIRE

Billy Jenkins

continued on page 73

438WIRE

Bob Marley

In the second part of the
1975 interview which
Bob Marley considered his
best ever, American writer
Timothy 'White

MANNERS

reggae superstar
about America, the Devil,
revolution and the problems
of being righteous and rich.

TRAVELLER
PT.2 UNDER
HEAVY

? SWIRE

Bob Marley

Armed struggle? I don't want to fight, but when I move to
go to Africa, if they say no, then me personally will have to
fight. Me don’t love fighting, but me don’t love wickedness
either. My father was a captain in the army; I guess I have a
kinda war thing in me, but is better to die fighting for yar
freedom than to be a prisoner all the days of your life.

C Picks up guitar against tree, strum it, humming softly ] Talk
about blessing the child, you understand? I write a song called
"Children of the Ghetto”. When my children are old enough
to sing it, I’m gonna record it with them.

Me still working on the words, the way it go: [talks!croons
lyrics] “Children playing in the streets, in broken bottles and
rubbish heap. Ain’t got nothing to eat, only sweets that rot
their teeth. Sitting in the darkness, searching for the light -
Momma scream, ‘Watch that car!’ But hit-and-run man has
gone too far. [sighs, looks at wife Rita and son Robbie] Aw,
Jamaica, where can your people go? Me wonder if it anyplace
on this earth.” [long pause .]

Have you ever been arrested?

Me go down to jail one time in Jamaica, and me go to jail
one time in England. When I was put in jail in Jamaica, drive
a car and somebody in the car was like a - no, a guy was
driving the car without a license, and when the police happen
he tell them I was teaching him to drive. So them teach me for
abidding and abetting [sic]. Circumstances in England is that
one time some guys who was smoke herb, and them claim
some herb was coming into England, and them come check
out our place one time and find one of the guys whose seller
was there. Them told him and tell him we was responsible for
the house. And them told me too. But it was nothing: I stay in
jail for about two-three hours, and them let me go. I stayed in
jail in Jamaica for six hours, or less than that. I went to court
and them say, “Okay, you can go.” [laughter]

the Maytals could team up for an amazing live album, a reggae jam.

Me never really think about that but maybe after a while we
can go into that, because Jamaica is a place where you build up
competition in your mind. Them feel like, say, you must fight
against me, and I must fight against you. You know what I
mean? Whatever you do. Is just a big fight going on.
Sometime a guy him must feel him must be like that because
he might never go a school and mine go a school, so say him,
“I think sometime him a wipe me off the market”, and him try
and wipe you off of the market, and competition is that.

We should come together and create music and love, but is
too much poverty. Too much poverty. People don’t get no
time to feel and spend them intelligence. The most intelligent
people is the poorest people. Yes, the thief them rich, pure
robbers and thiefs, rich. The intelligent and innocent are poor,
are crumbled and get brutalized. Daily.

What does the future hold for reggae?

I think it will get more spiritual, more spiritual. Benefit, ya
know? Benefit for the people. American musicians don’t really
- reggae music too simple for them. You must be inside of it,
know what’s happening, and why you want to play this music.
You don’t just run go play this music. Because you have to
think you can make a million off of it. But the music have a
purpose. You can make a million off it like Johnny Nash but
de creative purpose suffers. But the music have a purpose.
Why you play this music? And how come you can play other
music, and you don’t play other music. Why you play this
music? Because we like the feeling of this music. This music
have great expression.

A different feel from every music. Love it!

You recently met George Harrison of the Beatles, right?

Yeah. Yeah mon. Me sing one of the Beatles songs too.
Cover one of the Beatles songs - “And I Love Her”, [he sings: "l
gave ya all my love, that'all I dooo . . . ha!] The nice thing was
we meet and shake hands and say great — them dude they nice.
I really like meet them and sit down and chat with them.
They’re bredrens. Jah just love roots. Them guys are roots.
Them guys are all right, ya know. There is like a king and a
queen, ya know - those guys are roots.

Have you liked the articles on yourself you've read in magazines
from the States?

Me read plenty article, ’cause me know plenty article that is
joke article. Get plenty article that is just pure foolishness.
You have a guy come talk to you for a whole week, and him go
an’ write something for please the Devil. If want to just please
the Devil because him feel, say, “That is the way of the
people." It’s just a thing where nobody’s strong enough to
please the ones that you deal with. One and two guys is strong
enough to do that. Most guys try to find something lickle bit
foolish to say. Don’t really make sense. You just keep hurting
oneself, [laughter] There is no mystic place, you know.

Bob, for the record, when were the Waiters formed?

Well, ah, we’d been playin’ together for a long while but we
were never really doing recording, ya know? Jus’ like the
musicians who still do lots of recordin’ sessions. So we get
together and form a group from before 1970 or something like
that. One of them deals.

Before that, there were records in the early 1960s by the Wailing
Wa llers . . .

Yeah. That was when we just used to do singing.

Your voices were higher then.

At that time, yeah.

What is the first record you ever made?

That thing named “Judge Not”, a song called “Judge Not”.
I was singing by myself. 1961. [He later explains he ivrote the
song late in ’61 and released it in Kingston in early ’62.]

Leslie Kong cut your first records, right?

45IWIRE

Bob Marley

Yeah. “Judge Not" and “Do You Still Love Me”. I write

Count Boysie, and Desmond Dekker say I should check Leslie
Kong. And dat mon rude! Tell me ta sing my song straight
out, standing outside. Didn’t have no guitar, rass-clot. Dat

Ken Khouri, who tek the money and put it inna pouch in ’im
chest. No, Kong must pay for the studio time for me. So I sing
and Kong pay me two ten pound notes and then push me out.
When I sing for him, I say, “What if it a hit?” Him say, “Coo

blood-clot. Mon-a name-a Dowling make I sign the release
form, then them push me out a studio, and I run home. First I
wait for acetates, then I run home.

/ always loved the African Herbsman LP on Trojan. Was that a
rip off or an album the Wailers planned?

A herbsman is a righteous mon who enjoy the sweetness of
the earth and the fullness thereof. Him just smoke herb like
the Bible say, and commit no crime. Never see nothing from
them Trojan recording. I’ll tell ya something, mon. Me never
thought reggae gonna become popular over the world,
reaching many ears, when it was beginning. Was too much
wickedness trying to hold it down. The Devil was every-

Are you bitter?

Nah, flick. Me no bitter. Me better. Yes! A better mind!
Besides lisening to New Orleans R&B on American radio, what

listen to jazz?

I don’t know, I can’t really play so good to play jazz. You
know what I mean? Jazz is when you really know plenty things
about sensitive plenty sound. Then you can hear the 5th and
the 7 th and the 6th and the 9th and the 11th, and you can
really hear them and put them nicely in a working thing. But
me couldn’t do it, because me no really reach that stage yet.

You know, I spent my teens growing up in Montclair, New Jersey,
the same town that your lead guitarist, Al Anderson, is from. We
both played in local rock bands, and he was known for his skill at
playing Jimi Hendrix’s leads.

You grew up with Al? Yeah! Fuuuuckkk! That’s good! He
Hendrix’s music. The thing is, I was in England, ya now, for

some overdub guitar. We talk a little and it’s nice, ya know?

Now, his rock-styled way of playing raises an interesting point,

and the beauty is for practice. This, that and you do. You just
have a t’ing a-go. You just confine and practice. Up at Hope
Road lickle things you do, and make plenty jokes. But to
appreciate it still.

Do you think Al’s rock guitar style will influence reggae, make it
more complex?

Never idea! I have plenty ideas. A wild world of ideas. Ya
know? I don’t especially like - I like creative guitar. I don’t
especially dig like, a rock and roll solo or a blues solo, where
guitarists regularly play. Ya know? I like creative things. Ya

can hear it on Natty Dread, “Lively Up Yourself’ - him
playing the hell outta that one. [ laughter ] Know what I mean?
Rude! Good! Good!

So you really like the Natty Dread album, huh?

Me like it because Al up on it. An’, me hear something me

Incidentally, several people have recently called you a “Jamaican
Bob Dylan".

I used to hear about Bob Dylan plenty. You can say
something now; growing up in the ghetto, you don’t really got
not money for going out and buying recordings. You know
what I mean? In time you have money to buy food to eat. So
me hear about Dylan's music over the radio. I might go to
somebody’s house, and they have Bob Dylan and play it. But
me never seriously listen to Bob Dylan, until the other day me
start, like, listening. Because me have people around me who
directly, them love music so them become like music freaks.

some music!” We have the best herb, the best food, and so we

Your own career follows the evolution of reggae itself, from the
simple ska days, through rock steady into reggae.

Complicated thing happen. Dig it? When I started singing,

>=WIRE

Bob Marley

record when the thing was going to get popular, when
Jamaican singers in Jamaica was gonna get popular like
Wilfred Edwards and Owen Grey, and Jimmy Cliff, Lord
Tanamo. Plenty of them type a guys, during those times.

What were we talking about? { laughter; he relights a huge
white spliff\.

And then it changed. The guys who used to, like me, go to
a studio, and you come to me and say, “You can play?” and me
say, “Yes!” and you will want the opportunity. Because there

for £5 a week? Not at that time. Music was the thing.

Well, them rip off the people that play music, and music

your flesh. You know what I mean? You can go up and drink a
whole heap of rum!

The thing was, what happened to reggae music was that you
play a good American music, and when you put on reggae you
hear a big difference. And it don’t sound nice. When we put

on the American music and put on reggae music, one of them
sound weak - so the music grew in reggae. Improved.

During the period when the Waiters music was evolving from ska
into rock steady into reggae, did you ever go to America to perform?
Did you ever do any shows in Brooklyn?

Did I go to Brooklyn? We played there lickle time, long
time ago. We played with a band over there - and police stop
the show. Lots of policemen. First I ever see so much police.
All I saw was about ninety police come in, in the place and
throw us around. And it wasn’t such a big place.

play, and so some of them kick off the current, the lead

Why did the police come?

Boy, I don’t know. Is the guy who was keeping the show
was a West Indian, right? And most people think figure, say,
them guys are just the ripoff people, that mean any hour them

continued on page 72

ornette coleman

the harmolodic life

JOHN LITWEILER

This long awaited biography includes
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7 sWIRE

In this month’s Soundcheck: reviews of Public
Enemy, Bob Marley,John Zorn, John Lee Hooker,
Shabba Ranks, Big Black, Courtney Pine, SPK
and a million more. Plus: Outlines — Mike
Atherton wakes up to a bucketful of Blues and Max
Harrison discusses Bach’s preludes and fugues;

Fast Licks -John Corbett flicks through some of
November’s other releases; and Club Licks —

Kodwo Eshun assess the latest directions onto the
dancefloor.

50iWIRE

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6SSWIRE

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Compiled by the British library National Sound Archive (NSA), in association with The Wire , This is the definitive
6000-entry index to a decade of informed comment and provocative opinion.

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Bob Marley

Marley continued from page 47

And so we was really there, but the guy who had hired we
out had gone over to the next place, and then them guys come
in an start going rude because them can’t see us, whom them

them can be sure that their money really paid out. Ilaughter] I
feel that the guy who owned the place call in the cops.

at the gate to see that everybody leave. There was my
experience in the likes of a thing like that. Police like dirt, all

style, {chuckle] ^

Has anything like that ever happened to you in Kingston?

Yah mon. Them just don’t like to see whole heap a crowd,
where we draw. We draw the ghetto, we draw the people
ready to fight. We draw the people who are ready to live. We
draw the people who love righteousness. And the Devil don’t

and things. The Devil don’t like that.

/ brought a bunch of old singles down to show you. 1 have a 1972
single here on the Punch label of a Waders' song called “Screwface".
What does screwface mean?

That’s a song about the Devil. The Devil is a very generous
mon — he’ll give you everything for your soul! Hear me, he’s a
very generous mon, a very tricky mon.

When the thieves took up with reggae musk, mon, they

Was money a consideration when musicians stopped playing ska
and started playing rock steady?

du .understand? Strong,
du-du-du-du-du [he m
ly going through! It ki

id playing that slower s

speed up the beat. Them wanna keep it down, but it must go
through!

1 was surprised to learn that the Wailers rarely perform in

We hardly appear here, you know, except when we have
something doing, ’cause sometime it dan’t really make sense.
The only place you can play right now is some of the theatres,
and you just play theatres at holiday time, like Easter,
Christmas, holidays like that.

But next month you and Peter and Bunny are planning a big
concert in Kingston with Stevie Wonder, right?

Yeah! We lookin’ forward to having a party there! A nice
party instead of this big thing, you know. Dig Stevie. Never
met him personally.

Besides your American idols, who's your favourite Jamaican
artist? And I've heard you prefer dub and version tracks to complete

l would wonder if jealousies arise in such a poor situation, people
like you making money while other ghetto musicians are not.

spoil them. I’m not to see that plenty people do spoil at your
money, because I still know me have good friends. Once
money spoil you boy, you ain't got no friends. You friends is

here, them like you because you have money - and then when
your money done, you’re finished. You have plenty people
sing themselves, “When your money done, you ain’t got no

That line is from an old blues song by Billie Holiday. She died as
a result of her deterioration from heroin addiction.

Died of heroine? Sad. No money. They go-gog, but it
always come! Plenty people, they just spot truth. Money done,
you ain’t got no friends. Money done, you ain’t got no woman,
neither! [big laugh ] Whyyy-ooooh!

How do you feel about all the sudden interest you’re getting from

?i\YIRE

Bob Marley

people around the world, all these outsiders like me coming up to this
house to interview and photograph you?

It’s a funny feeling. Not really a funny feeling; it’s just like —
this is one of the things that happen if you’re doing music, if
you’re in the recording business. You must expect people to
ask you what’s happening. It is a funny t’ing.

You’re most popular in America among white kids. How’s that
strike you?

Well, to me them have no difference. To me, them coming
like [cordial tone], “What happening, Bob? What happening?”
Wherever, we are friends, just seeing people, h never really no

know tf I see them, them hold and talk to m^.

How accurate is the film The Harder They Come. p It's supposed
to be a mixture ofyour story, Jimmy Cliff's, and theJamaican outlaw
Rhygin.

even here when the film was down here. I like to travel if I
have something doing. If nothing doing, I prefer to stay. Me

Want to do things to come know everywhere, but if you’ve

different item, different people, but as for the place, if you’ve
seen one place you’ve seen them all. [ laughter } I’ll say there is
some places in America like Jamaica!

You’ll be doing a lot of travelling, touring, once the new album is
done. Apart from individual shows here and there, have you done a
great deal of travelling before, in the old days?

Yeah, not in England before, but I was in America, ’cause
me mother lived there. The pace faster. Definitely. Things go
quicker. Difference with America is that you can get things
done. Jamaica is a place where you relax and put off things.
Jamaica is a place where you relax and learn to put off things.
[laughter]

Ho boy, in America you got to get it boy, you got to get it!
Yah mon! We have Americans come down here, mon. Is a help
we get them, like, “Don’t go so fast, watch this. Please don’t
go so fast.” In America, things a snap\ You hear a young girl
say, “Goddam it! One telephone run Jamaica! I live in a house
with twenty telephones and one telephone run Jamaica!” ■

This interview with Bob Marley is taken from Rock Lives
(Omnibus Press £14.95) by Timothy White, who is also the
author of Catch A Fire, a biography of Marley. Reproduced

73SWIRE

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